The Chinese characters for chemical elements are the last characters that were officially created and recognized in the Chinese-speaking world. These characters are contrasted to those that are constantly being coined for dialectal usage. Chinese (written) language (pinyin: zhōngw n) written in Chinese characters The Chinese language (汉语/漢語, 华语/華語, or 中文; Pinyin: H nyǔ, Hu yǔ, or Zhōngw n) is a member of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages. ...

Some chemical elements, including gold (金), silver (銀), copper (銅), iron (鐵), lead (鉛), tin (錫), and mercury (汞), did not require new characters at all, as they were well known before the conception of modern chemistry and atomic theory. A chemical element, often called simply element, is a chemical substance that cannot be decomposed or transformed into other chemical substances by ordinary chemical methods. ... General Name, Symbol, Number gold, Au, 79 Chemical series transition metals Group, Period, Block 11, 6, d Appearance metallic yellow Atomic mass 196. ... General Name, Symbol, Number silver, Ag, 47 Chemical series transition metals Group, Period, Block 11, 5, d Appearance lustrous white metal Atomic mass 107. ... General Name, Symbol, Number copper, Cu, 29 Chemical series transition metals Group, Period, Block 11, 4, d Appearance metallic brown Atomic mass 63. ... General Name, Symbol, Number iron, Fe, 26 Chemical series transition metals Group, Period, Block 8, 4, d Appearance lustrous metallic with a grayish tinge Atomic mass 55. ... General Name, Symbol, Number lead, Pb, 82 Chemical series poor metals Group, Period, Block 14, 6, p Appearance bluish white Atomic mass 207. ... General Name, Symbol, Number tin, Sn, 50 Chemical series poor metals Group, Period, Block 14, 5, p Appearance silvery lustrous gray Atomic mass 118. ... General Name, Symbol, Number mercury, Hg, 80 Chemical series transition metals Group, Period, Block 12, 6, d Appearance silvery white Atomic mass 200. ... Chemistry (derived from alchemy) is the science of matter at or near the atomic scale. ... In physics, atomic theory is a theory of the nature of matter. ...

New characters were made for those that did not have their characters. Most of these characters were coined in the way that each contains two parts:

1. The "semantic part" refers to its usual state at room temperature and standard pressure. Metals (except mercury) contain the radical 钅 or 金 jīn ("gold"); for solid nonmetals 石 shí ("stone"); for liquid elements 水 or シ shuǐ ("water"); and for gases 气 qì ("steam").
2. The "phonetic part" represents a partial transliteration of the element. For example, 氦 (helium) contains the "phonetic part" 亥 (haì).

A few characters, though, are not "semantic-phonetic", but are "semantic-semantic". They also comprise of two parts, one referring to their state at room temperature and standard pressure, another being descriptive of their properties. These include: Room temperature, in laboratory reports, is taken to be roughly 21–23 degrees Celsius (69-73 degrees Fahrenheit), or 294–296 kelvins. ... Temperature and air pressure can vary from one place to another on the Earth, and can also vary in the same place with time. ... Hot metal work from a blacksmith Look up Metal in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... The left part of mā, a Chinese character meaning mother, is a radical that means woman A radical (from Latin radix, meaning root) is a basic identifiable component of every Chinese character. ... In jewelry, a solid gold piece is the alternative to gold-filled or gold-plated jewelry. ... Together with the metals and metalloids, a nonmetal is one of three categories of chemical elements as distinguished by ionisation and bonding properties. ... A liquid will assume the shape of its container. ... A gas is one of the four main phases of matter (after solid and liquid, and followed by plasma), that subsequently appear as a solid material is subjected to increasingly higher temperatures. ...

• 氧 (oxygen): the part 羊 is the short form for 養 (to feed, maintain), as oxygen is the gas for human survival.
• 氫 (hydrogen): the part 巠 is the short form for 輕 (light in weight).
• 氯 (chlorine): the part 彔 is the short form for 綠 (green).

Note that some of those "new characters" are not indeed new: they are instead archaic characters, whose original meanings have been obscure for long, such as 鏷 (Palladium), 鈹 (Beryllium) and 铬 (Chromium). General Name, Symbol, Number oxygen, O, 8 Chemical series Nonmetals, chalcogens Group, Period, Block 16, 2, p Appearance colorless Atomic mass 15. ... General Name, Symbol, Number hydrogen, H, 1 Chemical series nonmetals Group, Period, Block 1, 1, s Appearance colorless Atomic mass 1. ... General Name, Symbol, Number chlorine, Cl, 17 Chemical series halogens Group, Period, Block 17, 3, p Appearance yellowish green Atomic mass 35. ... General Name, Symbol, Number palladium, Pd, 46 Chemical series transition metals Group, Period, Block 10, 5, d Appearance silvery white metallic Atomic mass 106. ... General Name, Symbol, Number beryllium, Be, 4 Chemical series alkaline earth metals Group, Period, Block 2, 2, s Appearance white-gray metallic Atomic mass 9. ... General Name, Symbol, Number chromium, Cr, 24 Chemical series transition metals Group, Period, Block 6, 4, d Appearance silvery metallic Atomic mass 51. ...

Most elements have the same name in Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese but use a different variant of the same base character. The exceptions are the transuranium elements; as most of these elements were discovered after the establishment of People's Republic of China in 1949, they have been given different names in Traditional and Simplified Chinese as the former is still used in the Republic of China while the latter has been adopted by the People's Republic of China. Simplified Chinese characters (Simplified Chinese: 简体字; Traditional Chinese: 簡體字; pinyin: jiǎntǐzì; also called 简化字/簡化字, jiǎnhuàzì) are one of two standard character sets of printed contemporary Chinese written language. ... Traditional Chinese characters are one of two standard character sets of printed contemporary Chinese written language. ... In chemistry, transuranium elements (also known as transuranic elements) are the chemical elements with atomic numbers greater than 92, the atomic number of uranium. ... 1949 (MCMXLIX) was a common year starting on Saturday (the link is to a full 1949 calendar). ... Motto: None Anthem: National Anthem of the Republic of China Capital Taipei City (de facto) Nanjing (de jure)1 Largest city Taipei City Official language(s) Mandarin (GuóyÇ”) Government Semi-presidential system  - President Chen Shui-bian  - Vice President Annette Lu  - Premier Su Tseng-chang Establishment Xinhai Revolution   - Declared October...

Traditional characters for elements with atomic numbers 104 and above were only added in Unicode 3.1 (2001) as surrogate pairs that are part of the CJK Ideographs Extension B character set; many operating systems and web browsers do not support the display of surrogate pair characters. They are thus displayed twice in the traditional characters table below, as both the surrogate pair characters themselves and as combinations of phonetic components. Simplified characters for elements 104 and above have not been encoded as of Unicode 4.1 (2005) and are thus given only as combinations of phonetic components in the simplified characters table below. In chemistry and physics, the atomic number (Z) is the number of protons found in the nucleus of an atom. ... Due to technical limitations, some web browsers may not display some special characters in this article. ... CJK is a collective term for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, which comprise the main East Asian languages. ... A Chinese character. ... An operating system (OS) is a software program that manages the hardware and software resources of a computer. ... Icons for Web browser shortcuts on an Apple computer (Safari, Internet Explorer, and Firefox). ... Simplified Chinese characters (Simplified Chinese: 简体字; Traditional Chinese: 簡體字; pinyin: jiǎntǐzì; also called 简化字/簡化字, jiǎnhuàzì) are one of two standard character sets of printed contemporary Chinese written language. ...

Legend

Color coding for atomic numbers: A chemical series is a group of chemical elements whose physical and chemical characteristics vary progressively from one end of the series to another. ... The alkali metals are the series of elements in Group 1 (IUPAC style) of the periodic table (excluding hydrogen in all but one rare circumstance): lithium (Li), sodium (Na), potassium (K), rubidium (Rb), caesium (Cs), and francium (Fr). ... This article contains information that has not been verified. ... The lanthanide series comprises the 15 elements from lanthanum to lutetium on the periodic table, with atomic numbers 57 through 71. ... The actinide series encompasses the 15 chemical elements that lie between actinium and lawrencium on the periodic table with atomic numbers 89 - 103. ... In chemistry, the term transition metal (sometimes also called a transition element) has two possible meanings: It commonly refers to any element in the d-block of the periodic table, including zinc, cadmium and mercury. ... The poor metals or post-transition metals are the metallic elements of the p-block of the periodic table, occurring between the metalloids and the transition metals. ... Together with the metals and nonmetals, the metalloids (in Greek metallon = metal and eidos = sort - also called semimetals) form one of the three categories of chemical elements as classified by ionization and bonding properties. ... Together with the metals and metalloids, a nonmetal is one of three categories of chemical elements as distinguished by ionisation and bonding properties. ... The halogens The halogens are a chemical series. ... For the musical band, see Noble Gas (band) The noble gases are the chemical elements in group 18 (old-style Group 0) of the periodic table. ...

• Elements numbered in blue are liquids at room temperature;
• those in green are gases at room temperature;
• those in black are solid at room temperature;
• those in red are synthetic and do not occur naturally (all are solid at room temperature).
• those in gray have not yet been discovered (they also have muted fill colors indicating the likely chemical series they would fall under).

Simplified Chinese

View as an image

Traditional Chinese

View as an image The lanthanide series comprises the 15 elements from lanthanum to lutetium on the periodic table, with atomic numbers 57 through 71. ... The actinide series encompasses the 15 chemical elements that lie between actinium and lawrencium on the periodic table with atomic numbers 89 - 103. ...

External links

• http://www.limestone.on.ca/ibuild/davies/chinesept.html - periodic table in Simplified Chinese
• http://www.jergym.hiedu.cz/~canovm/vyhledav/varian20/cina.html - periodic table in Traditional Chinese